


A Task to be Finished

by brilligspoons



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Humor, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5084833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilligspoons/pseuds/brilligspoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Grantaire did not sign up for all this political intrigue, but that doesn't mean he won't casually let it happen to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Task to be Finished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aislingdoheanta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aislingdoheanta/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, aislingdoheanta! I hope you enjoy this. :)
> 
> Thanks to my amazing and ever-patient beta. <3
> 
> Title is from Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron.

In the grand scheme of his life and all its various twists and turns, Grantaire muses, being in jail is not the worst thing that's ever happened to him.

Actually, it's one of the best things, sort of, now that he thinks about it. It's not like he was doing anything particularly useful as a free person. Sure, he misses the ability to wander around the city whenever he pleases and drink as much wine as his meager purse allows. But while he's lounging around in a cell awaiting Her Majesty's judgment, Grantaire gets two meals a day, like clockwork, and a warm, dry cot on which to sleep, which is far more than he's had for the last five years or so. He's made friends with two or three of the guards, and they can generally be relied upon for a card game of an evening. He doesn't have to worry about unexpectedly running into his sister again, and therefore there's no chance of Sabine telling their parents where he is. There are no angry ex-clients chasing him down in the street to demand refunds for spellwork he very likely performed under the influence, or to demand his blood for deliberately sabotaging their rituals (in his defense, he only did that to assholes, and it's not his fault there are so many of those in the city).

There are only two real downsides to his current situation, he decides, one being the uncertainty of how the queen will rule on his case. He can't imagine she'll be overly hard on him—it was only a _little_ necromancy, after all, nothing that would bring about the downfall of the empire or, really, do much beyond give a truly terrible human being with a penchant for adolescent flesh the scare of his fucking life—but it's been weeks since they arrested him. How much time does the queen need to prepare a little slap on the wrist for appearance's sake? Is she building brand new stocks just for him? Seems a bit much, in his humble opinion.

The other problem is all this time Grantaire has to _think_ now. He exhausted his mental archive of magical theory towards the middle of week three, and all the poetry and philosophy lasted him another three or four days after that. Grantaire's taken to drawing out the few alchemical symbols he remembers on the dirt floor, pondering the various permutations and their applications in spellwork, but he's never had enough of a grasp on the necessary mathematics to do much of anything with them. He'd give up and stare at the ceiling until the night guards come on duty, but that inevitably brings him to the fact that not one of his supposed friends have visited him since his arrest, and that...is not something he wants to think about at all, if possible.

This turns out to be a moot point in the end, because week seven of Grantaire's incarceration begins with an explosion in the cell next to his. As he coughs violently from the combination of dust and smoke and attempts to keep his mouth and nose covered, Grantaire feels a hand tap down twice on his shoulder. He squints through the grit to find Enjolras glaring down at him.

"If you're not too terribly busy," Enjolras says, "we have work to do."

***

Enjolras is the universe's idea of a practical joke on Grantaire.

They'd been introduced not too long after Grantaire had moved to the city, Bossuet misguidedly thinking that they'd like each other—they hadn't. Though he'd instantly felt a spark of attraction, Grantaire had walked away from the encounter with a bruised jaw, a headache, and a vehement vow never to interact with Enjolras again. He'd content himself with lusting after Enjolras from afar and let that be the end of it. That was fine; that was normal. He found many people attractive, and some of them even returned the sentiment. There was no need to pursue someone who was utterly insufferable and, by all accounts, likely to get him arrested or killed in the wake of revolutionary fervor.

This resolution lasted for years, several more than Grantaire honestly thought it would, and it would've lasted for a lot longer if it weren't for the fact that Enjolras' ragtag team of anti-royalist do-gooders had been in desperate need of a competent spell-worker during one of their more...delicate operations. Most of their usual resources weren't willing to risk the then-king's wrath for yet another longshot, and so Joly and Bossuet, _bless their fucking hearts_ , had volunteered Grantaire's services.

His very, very cheap services.

"Really, he'll do it for a few ales," he'd overheard Bossuet explain to Enjolras and Combeferre. "A bottle of wine or two, at the most."

And when they'd all turned their gazes on him, inquiring and frantic and doubtful all at the same time, he'd sighed, then shrugged, then agreed.

Coincidentally, this is when he made it a rule never to accept jobs whilst piss-fucking-drunk.

***

"No," Grantaire says, "I am extremely busy here, and I can't possibly help you with anything. Go away."

Enjolras throws his hands up and turns on his heel, stomping his way back to the still-smoking hole in the wall. "He's _your_ friend," he tells someone just outside, " _you_ deal with him."

"Oh no," Grantaire hears Joly say. "We all made a solemn pact when you two started sleeping with each other not to play this game. Wrote it down on spelled parchment, signed it in blood. There was chanting, too."

"You scribbled it on the back of one of my old pamphlets with cheap red ink and nailed it to the wall of the Musain as Bahorel sang his favorite drinking song in a minor key," Enjolras says.

 

"That sounds just as solemn and binding to me," Grantaire calls out to Joly. "Well done."

"Thank you, friend."

Enjolras reaches up toward his hair but stops halfway and drops his arms, no doubt hearing Courfeyrac's voice in his head scolding him not to rip all his pretty hair out. Grantaire reminds himself that he owes Courfeyrac a week's worth of luck charms for that. If there's a cause he believes in more than the preservation of Enjolras' hair, he can't (well, _won't_ , really) name it.

"We don't have time for this," Enjolras is saying when Grantaire returns his attention to the present moment. "We were supposed to be at the palace by now. I didn't budget time in the schedule for Grantaire's tantrums."

"Amateur mistake," Grantaire says after a beat. He chooses to ignore the bit about how they're supposed to be at the palace, of all places. "How long have we known each other?"

Clearly done with Grantaire's stalling, Enjolras grabs him by the arm and drags him up from the ground and then out the giant hole he'd blown in the wall of the jail into the early morning light. Grantaire catches a brief glance of Joly's apologetic smile as he's pulled down the street. It seems to be just the three of them here, which is probably the smartest move Enjolras' made all morning. Usually Bahorel and Feuilly go along on prison breaks in addition to either Joly or Combeferre, but neither of them are exactly known for their reserved demeanors. At least blowing up the jail would be the only loud noise for now.

"While I'm pleased to be breathing the free air again, I would like it on the record that I'm offended you only broke me out to help you with something," Grantaire huffs out after several minutes of non-stop running. Weeks of inactivity have ruined his stamina. "Three months ago you broke Feuilly and Bahorel out an hour after they were jailed for being drunk and disorderly."

"I thought you wanted to stay in there," Enjolras says. "In fact, I distinctly remember you telling me to go away not fifteen minutes ago."

"'Contradiction' is my middle name."

"Actually," Joly says, "the judge dismissed the name change request, so your middle name is still 'Laurent'."

Grantaire opens his mouth to reply but snaps it closed again when Enjolras drops his arm. Somehow they've made it all the way to one of the palace's side entrances without any interference, which is not so surprising considering the sheer number of people racing towards the jail behind them. Though, now that he thinks about it, that seems like something of an overreaction to a mere wall breach.

"You only blew the one wall in, right?" he asks. Enjolras ignores him, so Grantaire turns to Joly, who shrugs and looks away.

"We needed to keep people busy," he says. "We also planted some of those firework spells you left on your desk."

"Those were unfinished and therefore dangerous, you _idiots_ —"

Enjolras makes a frustrated noise and gestures at him to stop talking. It's still dark enough that Grantaire can barely make out the lines of the door in the wall they're standing by, and if it weren't for the shock of blond hair, he'd probably lose sight of Enjolras in the shadow as well. He hears rather than sees the series of knocks against wood, the rhythm clearly something Les Amis developed at some point between Grantaire's arrest and this morning. He makes another mental note, this time to tell Combeferre to come up with a passcode that's a little less obvious next time.

Not that he wants there to be a next time.

The door swings open while Grantaire has his eyes raised to the sky and is feverishly praying to whatever gods or spirits might be listening to clarify that he definitely _does not want_ a next time. When he looks down again, there's a large, hulking figure silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by a flickering fire somewhere inside the building. Bahorel, six-foot-five if he's an inch, grins down at him over Enjolras' head. Grantaire scowls.

"Don't think I won't get you back for leaving me alone in the graveyard," he says.

"I actually am sorry about that," Bahorel replies with a grimace. "But if it makes you happy, I'll let you take a free swing at my beautiful mug."

Grantaire punches his shoulder as he follows Enjolras and Joly inside the building. "I'll be happy when I find out what's got Enjolras' pants in a bunch," he says.

Then, when he's had a chance to actually look at who's in the room with him, Grantaire blinks and says as evenly as he can manage in that particular moment, "Good morning, your majesty."

***

Grantaire doesn't necessarily like to blame others for his problems, but it was, in fact, Cosette's fault that he and Enjolras fell into bed together. Not that he begrudges her all her myriad victories throughout the last few years, but he feels like she could at least apologize, and she's not even the slightest bit bothered.

Cosette had appeared seemingly out of nowhere late one spring afternoon, entering the Musain with a healthy mix of hesitance and resolve. She'd walked right up to Enjolras, shook his hand, and introduced herself as, "Cosette Fauchelevant, or Princess Euphrasie Tholomyès, whichever provides me with your full attention."

Grantaire, who by that point had been working with Les Amis off and on for more than a year, had never before seen Enjolras speechless. Like the rest of the kingdom, they had all assumed that King Felix had disposed of his wife and daughter in some nefarious plot before spitefully dying himself, thus allowing his cousin, the much-hated Duke Thénardier, to take the throne. Either this was an imposter or possibly a spy from the palace, or the people had been lied to for well over a decade.

Naturally, Enjolras couldn't stomach the thought of the people being betrayed in any manner, let alone this one.

Through a series of events Grantaire paid little attention to (it was a particularly hazy time in his life due to a short-lived but unfortunate addiction to spelled absinthe, a gift from a disgruntled former client of his—long story), Cosette proved her claim to the throne and also convinced them all that she had no intention of perpetuating the monarchy were she to regain control. Grantaire suspects that Enjolras had never smiled so much in his life, overcome with awe and delight as he was. Instead, Cosette proposed a partnership between Les Amis and her allies within the Church (most notably among them Archbishop Simplice herself), the endgame of which being the overthrowing of Thénardier and eventual reformation of the government. She delivered this with such aplomb that everyone in the room was taken aback for a few moments.

"I have a... _friend_ in the palace," she'd said, breaking the silence. "She's pledged to help me in any way she can, and she has access to almost every part of the building. There's a great deal she could do for us on the inside."

Needless to say, Les Amis had taken her up on the offer.

There was some question as to who could navigate their way into the palace and through the court to meet with Cosette's friend, and had Grantaire been present during these conversations, he might have removed himself from the plotting entirely. Having more or less spent that time resolving the issue with the spelled absinthe, however, he returned to the Musain during some of the secondary planning stages, only to find himself the center of both Cosette's and Enjolras' attentions. Sitting with them had been Bossuet, his face a perfect mask of innocence.

"What secrets of mine have you just given away for free?" Grantaire had asked.

"Not much," Bossuet had said as he looked anywhere but in Grantaire's direction. "Cosette was just making sure she remembered your parents' names correctly for the letter she's sending to her friend."

"You're a _baron_?" Enjolras' voice could've melted steel.

Grantaire had gaped at him, gestured to his clothes and boots still caked with swamp muck and sweat, and said, "Do I fucking look like a baron to you?"

***

Now, Cosette sits next to the roaring fire with Éponine and Marius on either side of her, looking incredibly like the portraits of her mother that Grantaire remembers viewing on trips to the palace as a child.

"Good morning, R," she says, smiling warmly up at him. "I see you've accepted my invitation."

Grantaire glances at Enjolras. "Did I have a choice? I don't remember being given one."

Enjolras snorts and tugs him over to the chairs positioned across from Cosette. As they sit, Bahorel and Joly disappear into another room, Marius following them after a word from Cosette. Grantaire nods at him as he goes, then looks at Éponine and raises one eyebrow. She makes a rude gesture back at him.

"Well, there seem to have been some very cozy romantic developments around here since I went to prison," Grantaire says. He nudges Enjolras' leg with his knee. "I don't suppose you're going to get down on one knee and declare your everlasting love for me now, are you? Only give me a few minutes' warning, for my nerves' sake."

Enjolras' eyes widen, and he turns away.

"Don't joke," Éponine groans. "He's been more insufferable than usual since you got yourself arrested. Well done on that, by the way. You couldn't have gotten out at any point?"

Grantaire glares at her. "Sorry, how was I going to spell my way out of two feet of _warded rock_ while at the same time fending off all the guards in the building again? Please feel free to explain in minute, excruciating detail."

Cosette waves a hand between the two of them and shares a smile with Enjolras. "I can't tell if I've missed these two going head-to-head over the last few months, or if I enjoyed the quiet more."

"I don't know what quiet you're talking about, considering the way Bahorel, Jehan, and Feuilly have been going on recently," Enjolras replies.

Cosette's face flushes pink, and Grantaire opens his mouth to gleefully inquire as to what that's about when she says, "Anyway, we do actually have a reason for this morning's...events. I know you've been out of the loop for a while, R, so we'll try to catch you up as quickly as possible."

"I might know more than you think," Grantaire says, "and as a follow-up, you may want to talk to your guards about gossiping in front of prisoners. Very unprofessional."

Cosette and Éponine exchange a glance.

"So," Éponine begins, "about you being in prison…"

"We didn't know you were there until a week ago," Enjolras says.

Grantaire looks at him in surprise. "You didn't _know_?" he asks. "Where did you think I'd gone?"

"It's not exactly the first time you've gone away for weeks at a time without telling any of us," Enjolras points out. "We thought you'd mangled the spell you were setting up and decided to take a break or something out of embarrassment."

Grantaire sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge the hurt he'd been feeling over being forgotten, and while he'd been willing to forget it entirely since Enjolras and Joly broke him out, it's an enormous weight off his chest to know they hadn't actually ignored him. Not that this doesn't leave him with an even bigger concern now that he knows, of course.

"I'm assuming you have some idea of why," he says, "or, better yet, who's behind this?"

Cosette grimaces. "Many of Thénardier's supporters aren't happy with what happened," she says, "and even more of the supposedly neutral noble houses aren't thrilled that I plan to dissolve the monarchy and set up a parliament."

And Grantaire suddenly knows exactly who arranged for him to be arrested.

***

Enjolras had taken one look at the accommodations the steward brought them to and sneered at its opulence. The resulting argument over the need for him to control his reactions, especially in front of palace staff, ended in them breaking in the massive four poster bed in some unexpected and exciting ways. The next morning Grantaire had woken up to find Enjolras leaning over him, glaring and luminous in the daylight.

"That's not how we're going to end every argument going forward," he'd declared, but despite Grantaire's grudging acceptance, they'd proceeded to do just that for the rest of the day.

(Later, Enjolras will claim that this was simply a ploy to cement their cover as lovers. He will also be surprised when no one believes him.)

When they finally decided to make an appearance in court later that week, Grantaire had not been entirely surprised to see his sister present, but it did complicate things in a way they hadn't prepared for. He and Sabine got along fairly well, but she'd never understood his discomfort with their parents' political stances or the constant battle between him and their father over his occupational choice. The chances of Sabine writing home as soon as she saw him were high, and while Grantaire _liked_ Cosette, this was a risk he wasn't particularly thrilled about.

"You can't be serious," Enjolras had protested when Grantaire pulled him into an alcove, threw up a quick glamor around them, and voiced his latest reservations. "If you fuck this up just because of a petty disagreement with your parents, I will—"

Ultimately Grantaire's reunion with Sabine proved to be the easiest way to get Éponine's attention, and once they had that, everything fell very neatly into place. Thénardier was overthrown within six months, Cosette crowned, and Grantaire happily went back to spell-work and left the politics to the rest of Les Amis.

In retrospect, it did seem a bit too easily done.

***

Grantaire figures he shouldn't be surprised that his parents resorted to having him arrested, but that doesn't make it sting any less. He chooses instead to be worried about the amount of sway this means they have and what that means for Cosette. It's been half a decade since he last spoke with them, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that they're not thrilled with the latest regime change.

His face must be doing something terrible as he thinks this through, because barely a moment passes before he feels Enjolras take his hand and squeeze it gently. He doesn't even let go after, which Grantaire appreciates more than is probably healthy. Across from them, Cosette and Éponine wait patiently for him to process the new information.

"So," he finally says, "where does this leave us?"

"Once we figured out you were being held in the prison, we managed to get our hands on some of the arrest documents," Éponine tells him. "You were scheduled to be sent back to your parents' house tomorrow, and—well, we were hoping you'd consider going back to them anyway."

Grantaire looks down at his and Enjolras' intertwined hands. "For spying purposes. I can appreciate the idea, but I don't think they're going to let me in on any of their plans, even if I manage to smooth all of this over with them, or if Sabine didn't tell them everything about what I did to get Cosette on the throne. There's too much history of me not giving a damn about their opinions and politics."

"What were you doing in the graveyard the night you were arrested?" Enjolras asks. "Bahorel said something about a haunting, but he couldn't describe the circle you were using well enough for Combeferre and Jehan to figure it out."

"Ah," Grantaire says, raising his free hand to rub the back of his neck. He glances up at Cosette, who politely starts to hum and look around the room. "I was raising a ghost."

" _Grantaire_ ," Éponine and Enjolras say in unison. It's terrifying how their tones match.

"It was a only temporary ghost," he says. "It wouldn't have lasted longer than a day, if that."

Enjolras sighs. "Regardless, do you think you could do something similar to spy on your parents while you're there? A fake apparition that could report back to us, perhaps?"

Grantaire considers the idea. "Actually, I don't know that I'd need the apparition at all. There are a few spell circles I could modify to collect information, as it were. It'd be tricky getting access to all the rooms they'd be meeting in, and I wouldn't have a lookout to warn me while I'm casting, so I don't know if—why are you looking at me like that?"

Cosette and Éponine are grinning broadly, glancing back and forth between him and Enjolras, who's staring intensely at the fire. It dawns on him that Enjolras hadn't immediately denied it when Grantaire had teased him about declaring his love. He squeezes Enjolras' hand tightly.

"Not that I don't want you with me," Grantaire says, "because I really want to talk to you at length about feelings and shit. But wouldn't you rather be here, helping Cosette dismantle the government? That seems more your area of expertise than spycraft."

Enjolras clears his throat and _finally_ meets Grantaire's gaze head on. "I've made my recommendations known. Besides, Combeferre and Courfeyrac are doubtful that I won't blow something up when things don't go my way." Grantaire tries to stifle his grin but fails, if Enjolras' scowl is anything to go by. "It'll make getting us out if everything goes poorly easy, so don't be so quick to mock me."

Grantaire chuckles and turns to look at Cosette. "Well," he says. "It looks like you have your spies, your majesty. When do we leave?"


End file.
